Reading, Part I: Literature

It's amazing how much of a luxury real literature becomes when the bulk of one's reading is confined to The News and various articles of political analysis. Certainly not all of these are abysmal from a literary perspective; the latter genre tends to be by far the better of the two, with writers like Walter Russel Mead, Peter Berger, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer furnishing consistently readable columns for the more grammatically snobby among us.

However, it's beyond refreshing to be getting back into (English language) literature mode of late. (There's been plenty of French literature, which is fun in its own right: my current read in that language is Monsieur Larose, est-il l'assassin, a wonderfully vocabulary-and-slang rich psychological parody of the detective novel by one of Belgium's greats, Fernand Crommelynck.) Of course, getting back into the English stuff has required that I reconcile myself with the (rather abhorrent)  idea of "reading books online." I'm not a fan for several reasons, not restricted to my Bourgeois bias in favor of the smell of paper and the palpable roughness of its surface (I tell you, it makes a difference, seeing the way the ink has sunk into the slightly porous pages, rendering the letters coarser, individualizing them in a way you don't get onscreen). Reading something on a laptop also  a.) restricts your movement to places with an (accessible) wireless connection, b.) kind of wears on your eyes after a while, and c.) makes the reading feel cursory. However, it's not like there are English used-book stores everywhere around here, and I'm not about to buy any book that I don't love for full price at one of the many Barnes and Nobles-like establishments in the city. Admittedly, "not everywhere" and "unavailable" are two very different things: I could find the used English books if I wanted to, but motivation is lacking, since I then face the problem of transporting them back to the States.

Fortunately, I did bring one American novel, Saul Bellow's The Victim, along with me; I've been hoarding it up for the "ideal moment" as stingily as I used to hoard up Easter candy as a child. With the end of the semester now in sight, I've begun it, but am still reading it very slowly, preferring to savor it in the park during those rare afternoons when it is actually not raining. It's a good book so far, though I'm loathe to judge before having finished the story. The writing, at any rate, is elegant--simple in the best of senses, and adept at conveying and making realistic an emotional state (chez the main character) that could be easily overwrought or absurd. The violence of the "antagonist's" emotion and the sense of self-disgust that begins to pervade the protagonist's  mindset about halfway through the novel reminds me a lot of Dostoevsky. In fact, I'd have to say it's one of the most thoroughly Dostoevskian post-Dostoevsky works I've encountered. The notable difference here is that the most "Dostoevskian" character is in fact not the protagonist, but someone who's set himself up to work on the protagonist and force the poor guy to share (penitentially, as it were) in his own sentiments of self-loathing.

My more recent online reading (after an excellent short story by Edith Pearlman, available at Commentary magazine) has been Kate Chopin's Awakening. Once again, I'm only about halfway through and thus unable to comment on the story itself. The writing, however, is lovely; not quite Virginia Woolf lovely, but certainly lovely enough to lure the reader into the romanticism of Old Louisiana even as the plot remains somewhat critically aloof of the society it describes. Should be interesting to see how it concludes.

Apropos of little, I've also been reading a lot of Foucault and Hume lately. Mostly for my own "edification" (if one can say "edifying" of either one with a straight face--I am doubtful). Hume I'm rereading mostly out of interest (causality is a continually fascinating topic). However, Foucault's discussions of the discourse of power inherent in any formulation of history and of the way that history itself shapes notions of ethics is certainly relevant to my studies regarding the development of national identities and nationalism (and the ways the different historical circumstances of the Middle East makes certain presuppositions about those societies frankly absurd).

Poems by Northerners

I wonder what it is about the American South and the American North makes the former pretty darn good at writing stories but mediocre at poetry (really, Tate?), while the latter produces relatively few magnificent story-writers, but plenty of really brilliant poets. North of the Mason-Dixon line (and in New England more than any other region) you've got Bradstreet, Emerson (a good poet from a technical perspective more than anything), Longfellow, the Lowells, Robinson,Whitman, Poe, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens, e.e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, and Elizabeth Bishop. And that's just to name the more recognizable ones. Heck, Maine alone has four Pulitzer Prize winning poets. And that's a state of barely a million people...one sixth of the size of the city in which I attended university.

Then you've got the expats and exiles. Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot both were born in St. Louis but maintained strong connections with New York (Moore) and Boston (Eliot). However much the latter might have rejected the American Unitarian culture in the process of his move to England, conversion to high Anglicanism, and alignment with monarchism, the fact remains that a good deal of the imagery he resorts to in his less angst-driven poems is that of the New England coast. Walcott moved to New England. Even (ok, this is getting into fiction, I admit) Cormac McCarthy has roots up here.

Now, I really don't have any strong theory about what might be at the root of these differences. Population certainly has something to do with the numbers, I know. If one were to start listing novelists, sticking with the greatest, and then list the great southern novelists, the numbers would actually be similar. But that may be attributed more to the fact that the north has a much more highly concentrated population; I suspect that if you were to do a per capita comparison, the number of novelists of southern origin would turn out to be more impressive than an initial glance might indicate. In either case, the great novelists of the north remain very much overshadowed by the poets.

Someday, when I've read a lot more and have time to spare, I'll probably begin thinking about this phenomenon in earnest, evaluating my current hunches (isn't the word "hunch" a hideous one?) and comparing the numbers more carefully. What I'm more interested in observing now is that I absolutely love New England poetry, and that I think there's something to be said for reading works that have their roots in your home.

Before getting into that first observation, however, I should note that the fact that I and other New Englanders have a "literature" at all is rather strange, by American standards. I have learned since college that comparatively few people in America have strong local roots; New England and the Old South seem to be two of the only places where local identities have developed and actually become part of the consciousness of kids as they grow up. And hence there actually is such a thing as "New England" literature and there is such a thing as "Southern" literature, but barely a, say, Texan or midwestern literature, and even less a Californian one.

Here in Maine you still have town meetings and lobster fishermen, and people who make their living wading through knee-deep mud to dig for clams, and dairy farmers, and kids from The County getting off school for a few weeks to help with the potato harvest. You'll find the names of your neighbors on 300-year-old tombstones in the private plots dotting the roadsides. You might grow up, as my siblings and I did, playing in a bowl-shaped hill that is actually the ruins of the house that your neighbor's family used to live in. . .during the French and Indian war, and you'd know that one of them was scalped but survived and that the age and eventual success of the family is why the neighbors own all the surrounding land for several miles. You'll know why there's nothing quite like eating clam chowder on a cool August evening, and you'll recognize the smell of dying leaves and fresh apples in October. You'll know what it's like to canoe through the bog and come face to face with a moose.

Having experienced stuff like this first hand certainly makes a poem like Elizabeth Bishop's The Moose or Wilbur's October Maples, Portland resonate a little more deeply. Not that one can't understand and appreciate them without being from the region. You can still look at the meters and imagery and be quite moved wherever your origins might be. But the lovely thing about a line that describes autumn leaves "yield[ing] us through a rustled sieve / The very light from which time fell away" can be understood two ways: through intellectual recognition, a recognition that hinges on understanding the words and being able to compose of them a coherent mental image, or through empathetic recognition, hinging on having experienced roughly the same types of things, so that you barely have to imagine the "gravelly roads,. . ./ rows of sugar maples,/. . .clapboard farmhouses / and neat, clapboard churches, / bleached, ridged as clamshells, /. . . twin silver birches"--you see them quite clearly, and the scene resonates emotionally not only by virtue of its objective aesthetic qualities, but also because you have your own set of memories associated with it. 

Of course, it's pretty obvious that the line between the two types of "recognition" involved in reading poetry gets pretty blurred in practice. For one thing, we only understand language at all through empathetic recognition, as I see it. Intellectual recognition is possible because one can apply what one has understood empathetically to situations and settings that one has not experienced first hand. It's a very basic analogy-making process: yes, I know what "yellow" is from my memories of seeing yellow things, so I can make the "tincture," the "sanguine glow" of the maples a bit more concrete, and if I have any associations at all of yellow with beauty, I can have some idea of what Wilbur means when he says that the sight "cannot fail to leave a lasting stain." On the other hand, the "empathetic recognition" of which I speak will necessarily involve intellectual recognition to an extent: even if you happen to know the exact northern New England/ Canadian town of which Bishop writes, you still have never seen it at precisely the same time she did, from precisely the same perspective. And so the power of the intellect to supply what is lacking in the experience by means of analogy working to fuel the imagination is essential. Even for the readers whose cultural and geographical roots are most nearly identical to those of the poem.

The difference, then is perhaps technically no more than one of degree. One is more familiar with the imagery of art from one's own region, but the action of the imagination is by no means made unnecessary by the increased proximity. However, to admit that the difference between reading your region's poetry and the poetry of, say, Baudelaire's Paris is nothing more than a difference of degree, is not, I think, to deny that there is something peculiarly appealing about one's "own" poetry. It's rather like friendship in that respect: there's nothing about your friend per se that makes your acquaintance with him or her qualitatively different from your acquaintance with anyone else. But the fact that you're more familiar means also that you are more invested in the friend than in other people: you may sympathize quite genuinely when you hear of a tragedy it the family of an acquaintance, but that will not affect you nearly as immediately as would a tragedy in a friend's family, which can have almost the effect of a tragedy in your own. The more your understanding of a poem (or a painting, or a person) may be characterized by this empathetic recognition, the more you are invested in the object of understanding. And with that investment comes a much greater reward with each increase of understanding.

All of which is to say that while I appreciate the depth of Bishop's discussion of the nature of knowledge in At the Fishhouses, what I (not-so secretly) appreciate the most is the fact that the poem is so right when it says that:

"All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches, 
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls."

A Few Quotes

Frederick Douglass: 

"The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery."


"Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln."



Sam Houston:

“To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country-the young men.”

 
"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

Stonewall Jackson:

(In response to a comment that it was a shame to shoot so many brave men): "'No, shoot them all, I do not wish them to be brave."

William Tecumseh Sherman:

 “You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it.

Henry Adams:

"I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world."


(Haven't I always said it's the impractical idealists who do the most harm? Bear in mind also that this was said in context of the South's pigheaded refusal to come to a compromise when Lincoln offered them a generous chance after Fort Sumter.) 




Joshua Chamberlain: 

"But out of that silence rose new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism, of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key-note weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness; the writhing concord broken by cries for help, some begging for a drop of water, some calling on God for pity; and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun; some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them; and underneath, all the time, the deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless, or too heroic, to articulate their agony...It seemed best to bestow myself between two dead men among the many left there by earlier assaults, and to draw another crosswise for a pillow out of the trampled, blood-soaked sod, pulling the flap of his coat over my face to fend off the chilling winds, and still more chilling, the deep, many voiced moan that overspread the field." 


 (On the surrender at Appomatox: "...On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper or vain-glorying, nor motion of man, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!" 


(I can hardly help being proud that this fellow from Maine was also one of the best writers of the war.)



Abraham Lincoln:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

  
Pope Gregory XVI:

"We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions. 

We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices above-mentioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter."

 

Another Compelling Argument against Secession

Again from Lincoln's first inaugural address:

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession?

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

The Declaration of Independence on Secession

Here's how the Founders justified their own rebellion:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Is a government that

just might

someday legally abolish slavery "destructive of these ends"?

Lincoln, and some of the more Practical Arguments against Secession

One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. 27

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

--First Inaugural Address

On a Fundamental Question of the Civil War

Can a government legislate morality? The Saint Superman blogger articulates the question using an analogy I've always thought of as the natural one, comparing the slavery issue to the current abortion debate.

Of course, one can very legitimately argue that the Civil War was not about slavery at all. And I'd be the last starry-eyed idealist to suggest that the North had entirely pure motivations in going to war. Politicians are politicians, and on both sides, idealism was pretty much confined to the individual soldiers dying for a cause.

The North's reason for going to war was an interpretation of the Constitution that, right or wrong, considered (as one sees in Lincoln's address) secession to be an act of rebellion against a legal government. I believe Locke would support that interpretation, but more on that later.

However, whatever the North's reasons for going to war, it is very difficult to take seriously any argument advancing the idea that the South was indifferent to the slavery question in seceding. For one thing, if they were not remotely afraid that Lincoln was interested in abolishing slavery (remember, KA-NB act man), why does he spend the first seven paragraphs of his inaugural address reassuring the South that he does not believe he has the legal right to abolish slavery?

Interestingly enough, Lincoln's address seems to suggest initially that the federal government has no right to legislate morality, which makes one wonder what his policy might have been in the current debate. On the other hand, his closing comments actually clarify this original position, suggesting that while he as president does not have the authority to interfere with slavery, he recognizes the right of the union as a whole to ratify amendments to the Constitution that would, logically, include any aiming to do what most of the Founders had wanted to do in the first place: make slavery as taboo in political law as it is in moral law.

For reference, here's the quote, though it would behoove anyone interested to actually read the address and note the movement he makes over its course:

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

The point is, Lincoln reminds the South that he is not attempting to overstep his own legal limitations and abolish slavery. Yet the interpretation of the Constitution that he presents also reminds them, implicitly, that they are as bound by the Constitution as he is, and must be willing to adhere to that Constitution whether it abolish slavery or no.

On the other hand, the South, was attempting to counter what they assumed to be necessarily unconstitutional--that is, the federal government finally confirming that human beings are not property, nor can they be in any legal sense so. In objecting to Lincoln in particular, they were, in the first place, presupposing an unconstitutional act on the president's part that had not taken place; and surely one can't justify secession (again, I'm assuming Lockean terms for the purposes of this post) based on the idea that the government might do something illegal. The underlying, and probably much more deeply-rooted objection was to the idea that the government can make any laws at all regarding morality. In a democracy, is principle to count at all (as Lincoln had argued in the KA-NB affair), or is legality simply a matter of majority rule?

If the latter, I think we all need to have a problem with trying to outlaw abortion. Don't want to start getting ahead of ourselves here. I mean, we couldn't actually have the federal government confirm basic ideas like "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not kill", could we?

From Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

A very intelligent, if brief, argument against secession.

"It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself."

Part Three: Faulkner

Despite the vast differences between their narrative styles, both Austen and Flaubert seek to understand an individual through externals. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, by contrast, uses a variety of first-person narrators to give the reader direct access to individual consciousnesses: these consciousnesses, then, become the defining aspect of each character. Within the framework established by a controlling, selecting “narrative consciousness” are fifteen different accounts of the novel's action, each given by a secondary narrator with his or her own understanding of reality. The portion that Addie Bundren narrates from her coffin is strikingly different in focus from Cora Tull’s hypocritically religious interpretation of events or Anse’s unthinkingly self-centered understanding. Whereas the rest of the characters address and interpret the action and events of the novel directly, she explains the journey to the cemetery in Jefferson in terms of the deep, underlying motivations that led her to request this burial in the first place. The following passage is taken from her account of her early marriage to Anse, just after the birth of her first-born, Cash. Central to the paragraph is her preoccupation with the randomness and insecurity of language, a preoccupation that directs the course of her gradual withdrawal from husband and children into what she attempts to make a world of pure act, unmediated by the forms and words that seem to her to betray the truth of experience.

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn’t matter.” (164)

The narrative consciousness that frames Addie’s account preserves the idiosyncrasies of her stream-of-consciousness, to the point of using punctuation less in a conventional manner to separate discreet portions of dialogue (as an Austen would do) than in a manner that reflects the pauses and progressions of the experienced thought process. Commas mark mental pauses rather than grammatical units, and quotations are incorporated into Addie’s thought without the distinguishing quotation mark to set them off from her consciousness. This technique allows the reader, even as Addie explains her suspicion of language, to garner much additional information about her personality and character simply through the way in which this argument is presented.

The triad of short, dismissive sentences with which she commences indicates the skepticism that controls the paragraph; yet these abrupt dismissals of Anse’s “word” contrast with the complexity of structure and length at which she recounts her own visceral rejection of Anse’s perspective. She is either unwilling or unable (likely both) to examine the nuances of his consciousness, and will thus retain hers as the measure of everything she confronts. The anadiplosis and repetition of structures (I knew that. . ., that) also leads us to a sense of her everywhere-apparent intensity. She rejects Anse’s words out of hand and elsewhere rejects the verbal even violently, because she feels strongly about the insufficiency of this mode of understanding. Words cannot bring about the mingling of blood that she longs for as a means of defeating her isolation; Cash, as the fruit of her womb, is the only creature, at this point, she believes, to have “violated” her aloneness, and he correspondingly does not need words to communicate with her. One cannot truly, she argues, “fill a lack” satisfactorily with a “shape”; she has found this to be consistently the case in her experience, pointing to “the others” that have also failed to be of any use at “the right time”.

By the time we reach the end of the paragraph, the narrative consciousness has made clear precisely how Addie's rant about language relates, not merely to her personality and ideas, but to the plot unfolding as she speaks. Not only are words useless to convey meaning; Anse also is meaningless to her. His name can be interchanged with no alteration of what is being said with the “empty” term, “love”: despite being her husband, he too has failed to fill the lack, to connect blood with blood in the manner that she feels necessary. This point is crucial to her motivation for demanding the trip to Jefferson. Anse and love both are things that to her “d[on’t] matter,” and by the time she has had her affair with Whitfield she has similarly rejected both Cash and Darl, thinking them away so that “it doesn’t matter what they call” these two sons either. All that is left to her now as the root of her identity is the blood of her forbears in the soil in Jefferson; the family that she has acquired through ritual and verbal assent has no meaning for her. She demands the trip as “revenge” for being tricked by “words older than love or Anse”; her revenge is to get the better of this deception at Anse’s expense, to affirm the meaning of her roots above the meaning of the new life she rejects even as she participates in it.